I have this problem occasionally with my inspiron 1100. When i come back from hibernate or start up my laptop the screen is really dark. When i plug it in to power it goes away, but still its quite an inconveninace when i'm trying to work. I dont know whats wrong with and i do try the fn+up arrow sometimes and that doesn't work.

Message Edited by bigpappasmurf on 12-23-2003 08:39 PM

have you tried turning up the brightness in the bios? there is a setting there to increase the screen brightness. just for the heck of it, try fn+up arrow also..

it is only dark when using the battery? try adjusting the bios brightness, there are two settings. one is while using the adapter, the other is while using the battery.

Brightness is on max, both for power and battery in bios. With dark screen, it also respond to brightness settings, but with less darkness screen is completely dark. Btw, screen is functioning normally without option turn off monitor, and what is very strange, sometimes it responds normally to turn back normal screen (on mouse movement or keyboard). Hybernate is off also.

In your opinion, what can be problem-software or hardware?? Is it possible to have some software conflict?

have you tried an external monitor? if its good there, then it might be hardware.

personally, if lcd is too dim for you, call dell tech support and have them replace the lcd panel.

I'm still haveing the problem even with the settings in the bios set to the max.

then it must be the lcd backlight. but you say the problem goes away when you get into windows?

Yes, problem just appears when computer is working, and monitor is set to go off. This is happening not every time. I don't belive that something is wrong with the monitor, because sometimes it works fine-specially when I quickly resume after turning off the monitor. If I wait more than few minutes, problem appears.

Is it possible that there is conflict between dell's quick set and windows' power management? Because when I change settings in quick set, in ctr panel settings stays the same,

and usually after settings in quick set, computer starts to behave strange with power managemnet (like turning off the monitor when the lid is shuted down, even if I don't give option for this).

Is there any possibility to adjust power settings in registry file directly and how to do this??

and I forgot to mention this,

I found out that in video card settings, under monitors I have default monitor, one digital flat panel, and again default monitor, strange??

I have an Inspiron 2500 and have similar problems.  Though I set all power management functions to "never" its still a gamble whether or not I'll have a screen when I start up.  Normally what happens is I start the computer and the screen is lit.  Between the first Windows screen and the blue welcome screen (XP) the screen goes dark and doesn't come back.  On good days, I can move the screen down, just short of closing it, bring it back up and its lit again.  However, if I the screen goes dark for any reason (screen saver, restart, anything) I'm hosed for many hours before I can get it to work again.

Any ideas?  Is it relavant that I'm currently living in Russia so I'm on a 230V, 50Hz system.  Of course the coverter is supposed to cover this.

Thanks